Re: Authentication/Billing Servers Down

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The fix passed QA and was quickly installed on the billing servers, which have been brought back online. At this time players should not experience any issues logging in to the game through the Turbine Launcher.

We apologize for this unplanned downtime.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Authentication/Billing Servers Down

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The Turbine Billing and Authentication servers are currently down. We're working on it and we'll update you as soon as we have more information.

My apologies for the inconvenience!

-Jessica
__________________
Executive Producer
Asheron's Call

N3 ~ Kwip's "Time To Buff Up On Darktide?"

"I don't know if you heard it yet, but Darktide is getting unique content. There's been all sorts of hollering, singing and gnashing of teeth over the matter... So this whole prospect has me a bit excited."

Kwip excited? Are you ready to loot his corpse? Read more here!

For a moment, Kresovus could not make sense of the scene before him. His own people, dozens of them, slaughtered one another in the streets. Fully armored soldiers fought near-naked warriors, as though half of his people had descended on the other half in their sleep. Skulls were split and limbs were severed. The streets were stained with purple blood.


Read the February teaser, Infiltration, here !

Give us your feedback here !

Upcoming Server Downtimes

Wednesday February 9, 6:00AM - 11:00AM PST Tentative
All worlds will be brought down to prop the February event, Infiltration. Please note that this date is tentative and may be changed.

GuildWar Stratics is pleased to announce a Beta Key Giveaway Contest in conjunction with Guild Wars' Beta Weekend Event which begins at approximately 12:01 a.m. PST (08:01 GMT) on Friday, February 18th.

Readers and fans can participate in this contest on the Guild Wars Stratics Forums in our Council Table Forum.

To enter the contest, let us know what your ideal group is in Guild Wars - the size and professions - and the logic behind it, in about 500 words. All participants in the discussion will be put in a pool and winners will be drawn from that pool. The contest ends at 1:00 a.m. PST on Wednesday, February 16th and a few dozen happy winners will be notified by email by the end of day, so make sure that your email address in your Forum profile is
correct.

See you in Ascalon!

Star Wars Galaxies will be making an official announcement on their site tomorrow about some new cool items going into the game. In the mean time, we bring our readers a little teaser with some pictures at the Mos Eisley Space Port Forum.

Check out this thread for more details!

I just wanted to post that the February LttP is going to be a little late this month, it won't be going up until the end of this week at the earliest.

Currently the February event, Infiltration, is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, February 9.

For right now, I can give you a brief tease of some of the changes and new stuff coming in the February event!

- Two more tiers of higher wield-req loot weapons for melee weapons, missile weapons and casters.

- New Darktide-only dungeons -- within these dungeons are an opportunity for very rapid advancement from level 20 up to level 109... if your fellow players can't prevent you from getting to it!

- An unseasonable thaw is coming... the snow is melting and snowmen and scarecrows will disappear from the landscape spawns.

- The buy cap of all vendors in the three Social Center towns (Holtburg, Shoushi, Yaraq) is being increased from 25,000 pyreals to 1,000,000 pyreals.

- Many of the outlying landscape spawns in the Withered Atoll have had the number of creatures reduced. In addition, Tumeroks in the Withered Atoll will no longer spawn wielding shields. Both these changes were made based on player feedback, and these are not the only improvements to the Atoll that we are working on.

These are all in addition to the new content, quests and items that we're introducing in February. We'll have more details in the February Letter!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Greetings all, the log of last night's HoC is now available for your reading pleasure. Click right here for Dragons of Norrath HoC Log.

It was a great HoC despite some technical issues that the Devs were having - Absor had to be "channeled" - we had excellent questions and great answers about the upcoming expansion, Dragons of Norrath.

A few tidbits to share...

Brekkee - *Rick* Will we find out what happens with Lanys or is this the Dragon's story? Nagafen and Vox?
Rashere - Lanys has been gathering the armies of Overthere. To find out what happens, I recommend you keep an eye on Dreadlands over the next week or so.

Brekkee - *Elphabas_FV* How will the guild bank work? Number of slots etcetera?

Rytan - The guildbank holds a total of 200 items which can be flagged by the guild banker
in a variety of ways to allow certain guild members to use them.

Rytan - For example, one of the flags allows anyone who can actually use the item themselves to take it out of the bank.

Rytan - You can also flag an item for a specific person.

N3 ~ Kwip's "A Light Assembled, Part V"

"Wong and company have crashed against the Tumeroks, inflicting heavy losses on both sides. Wong was almost killed in the initial clash, but the quick actions of the newly arrived Rahzel and the Life-Giver Twins, Ardith and Ardice, brought him back from the brink of death. But it is only a moment's respite - Wong has returned to the battlefield in the hopes one last push will break the Tumerok ranks."

Kwip's saga continues --

Turbine Launcher Auth Problems -

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We are aware that you are unable to log into the game with the new launcher. Ops is working on it now. I do not have an ETA nor do I have more information about the problem other than Ops is working on it.

I will bring Ibn up to date on the problem and he will take it from there.

I'm very sorry for the problems...
__________________
Wendy 'Katahdin' Gallant
Player Support Manager
Asheron's Call Franchise

[21:36] Guthima the Wise of Arwic has been visited by The Old One. She was last seen leaving Arwic and heading West
[21:37] Though she loves magic, The Old One is scared of portal space and is avoiding traveling through any portal. She cant be moving very fast, then.
[21:38] The cow in rithwic has been slain by The Old One.
[21:41] The Old One has been spotted in Cragstone

[21:59] Thank you for your assistance in apprehending The Old One

DERETH MUSEUM GRAND OPENING

The Dereth Museum announces its grand opening Monday, January 17th, 2005! The brainchild of Damien Sarin, a long time Asheron's Call player on FF and the original author of the Aerlinthe Report, the museum makes available to the community many of Dereth's prized treasures. Numerous volunteers have worked tirelessly for months ammassing the collection and creating elegant displays.

The collection is divided into 16 exhibits, each housed in a cottage of Frostfell's Mosswart Place housing settlement. Mosswart Place has a settlement portal just north of Shoushi at 31.3S, 72.6E, easily accessible to all. Anyone from any server can roll up a player on FF to visit! Admission to the museum is free.

Some of the exhibits include the Ixir Xi exhibit, showcasing items taken from the Blackmire temples; the Pack Toy exhibit; the Relics of Old exhibit, showcasing many of the game's retired items; and many more! The centerpiece of the museum is The Legacy Exhibit. Here you'll find many, if not most, of the unique one-per-server items from Frostfell. Among them are many of the Commemorate Bronze Statues, the Shendolain Soul Crystal Shield, the Staff of the Lightbringer, and the fabled Staff of the Weeping Witness, the prize awared to Caeryn Dryad for solving the Lost Prophecy puzzle in beta.

The museum's first event is a raffle sponsored by Damien Sarin. Tickets will be available for purchase from Damien beginning Monday, January 17th. The C notes raised in the raffle will go towards ongoing maintenance of the exhibits. Raffle details, including a list of prizes, can be found on the Museum Events page.

For more information about the Dereth Museum, visit the web site at http://www.derethmuseum.com or send email to Dereth Museum.

Damien Sarin of FF, Museum Director
Curator of the Legacy Exhibit

Extra creatures and acid pits in dungeons

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We're currently aware of an issue affecting at least two dungeons -- the Umbral Halls and the Fortified Vault Sewers -- that is causing all objects in these dungeons to be duplicated multiple times. These include creatures, portals, and acid pits.

We are working on a long-term solution to this issue. In the interim if you noticed duplicated creatures or an excess of damage in an acid pit, please contact an Envoy using Urgent Assistance.

If you have left a corpse in the acid pits in the Fortified Vault Sewers and duplicated acid damage is preventing you from recovering it, please contact an Envoy using Urgent Assistance. They may be able to assist, however we cannot make any guarantees, it depends on how busy the Envoy staff is at the moment.

At this time we do not expect a fix to require any downtime, nor will there be a rollback of any kind.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

N3 ~ Kwip's "A Light Assembled, Part IV"

"Wong and the other defenders have run from the new settlement,Cragstone, upon hearing that hundreds of new portals have opened up near Chapel Blackspire.
Unfortunately, they're not the only ones coming - a large force of Tumeroks have beat them to the area. We join the story as the defenders arrive..."

Kwip's saga continues

Major distribution announcement for Throne of Destiny

Check out the press release!

Then read Jessica's letter!

Then let us know what you think!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Letter from Jessica Regarding the Sony Announcement
posted on 18-Jan-2005

If you haven't read the press release yet or heard it from your buddies, fantastic news for the Asheron's Call Throne of Destiny expansion pack:

Our distributor will be Sony Online Entertainment. We'll be partnering with SOE to get the expansion pack on the retail shelves and to market it.

That's right; come the spring of this year, the developer and publisher of EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside will be putting the ACTD expansion pack on a retailer's shelf near you and will be helping us market the game. At first glance, this probably looks like we've lost our minds. I can hear the comments now: "Why would you have a competitor distribute the expansion pack? Are you mad? And can I have some of whatever you're smoking?"

Well, we may be nuts, but there is a method to our madness:

1. SOE has very good reach into the retail world. They can get us good space in thousands of retail shops and that is critical to attracting more players into the game;

2. SOE also has a great marketing arm, one with years of experience at supporting retail launches of expansion packs, with proven results. We get to take advantage of that experience to give Throne of Destiny some extra oomph! in the marketplace.

Those are two nice advantages for a first time publisher to have, the equivalent to being dealt wired aces in Hold 'Em. We plan to ride those aces for all their worth.

All in all, this is a great deal for the expansion pack. It gives us excellent reach in the retail space, allows us to stretch our marketing budget better while working with a group with proven success. I don't think we could have done much better on this short of having God personally place the units on the shelf.

I'm sure there will be some speculation about what all this means or if there is some hidden agenda here, so before the rumors start:

Turbine is not being bought by SOE. This is strictly a retail distribution and marketing deal, nothing more;

We're not moving the games to SOE's The Station. You'll still access them through Turbine;

The Illuminati had nothing to do with this deal. Really. No, really. I'm not kidding, man, you don't want to go there...

To sum up, working with SOE on distribution and marketing is a great deal for all of us and a great opportunity to get Throne of Destiny in front of more eyeballs. We're pretty excited about it and we hope you are, too.

Give us your feedback on this article.

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming, today announced the formation of Station Publishing, a new distribution label within the company. Station Publishing will focus on distributing interactive entertainment products licensed from external content providers for the PC and game console market. The first titles due from Station Publishing will be Turbine Entertainment Software's Asheron's Call: Throne of Destiny(TM) and Asheron's Call 2: Legions(TM).

Upcoming Server Downtimes

Tuesday January 11, 6:00AM - 8:00AM PST

Turbine billing and launcher servers will be brought down for scheduled maintenance. Players using Turbine billing may not be able to log in during this time.

Wednesday January 12, 6:00AM - 1:00PM PST

All worlds will be brought down to prop the January event, Assault.

"Soldiers of Dereth! To me!" she cried. The Queen's Royal Guard, scattered and battered by the sudden attack, converged on Tirenia. They wore a patchwork of armor and cloak. Many had been asleep when the Vault had been breached. None of them had ever expected an attack in this most secret of locations. Now they paid the price for that arrogance.

Read the January teaser, "Assault", here.

Give us your feedback here .

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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations